The Centre Pompidou presents the first French retrospective devoted to the work of Mike Kelley, featuring a sequence of some one hundred works created between 1974 and 2011. The American artist (born in Detroit in 1954), who died prematurely in January 2012, left a complex, protean and disturbing work, drawing upon both high culture and popular culture.

After a first stop at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, this retrospective, designed in collaboration with the Mike Kelley Foundation for Arts, will then be presented at New York’s PS1 and the Los Angeles MoCA. Each city is the site of a specific event as each presentation is reconfigured by the curator of the hosting venue. Thus, the layout of the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition revolves around the highlights of the artist’s production. The large installations, such as The Poetics Project (with Tony Oursler), 1977-97, are faced with more intimate series of works, in particular on paper, from European and American collections. From the first performance pieces created in Cal Arts, the famous Los Angeles art school, to the amazingly rich graphic work, including the spectacular systems in which the artist uses all techniques (video, photography, odd objects…), Mike Kelley’s work, scholarly with a tinge of irreverence, spreads out in a striking visual and sound itinerary.